Gimp Kickstarter? (helping GIMP to be much better)

As you know gimp is an awesome program made mainly by passionate volunteers and it is open source and completely free.

...Unfortunately that also means that it doesn't get the funding other similar "bussiness" projects do. For instance Photoshop, corel painter or paint tool sai to name a few.

While it's great the fact that this proyect is supported by donations and by the free work of the developers. I assume that they have other comitments to earn a living.

I think We all could help (via kickstarter) to fund a "big" jump on this program Mainly buying more manpower and/or whatever resources the developers might need to get a lot of improvements in a sh0rter amount of time or even pay the developers to have them in this proyect longer.

Donations as of now tend to be random and aimless. With a kickstater The GIMP team could easily get 1 million dollars (or maybe even more) though donations. If the people know that they are getting a product they love much faster.

(Jul 7, 2013 12:02)ofnuts Wrote: Kickstarter is for commercial purposes, which is the complete opposite of the Free Software movement. Donate (see links in my profile) or participate (there are way to participate, even if you are not a programmer).

You guys retain the rights of the software. but if you don't feel confortable with that there are in fact other funding proyects that are similar but for opensource . .

I do agree that aditional funding for gimp would definately improve gimp at much faster time!
All people need is a set of goals with certain amount of cash* needed for certain gimp features! So people would read features and would see how important it is to have those features.

(Jul 8, 2013 09:49)ofnuts Wrote: Not sure... Gimp is done by very skilled developers, who know the application very well. So either these people have a job and work on it on their spare time

exactly! this is the point
GIMP is free software and the developers are free to implement features or even not and this is good so far. It was good enough for decades until today.
Why this hunting for features, features, features, ...? "GIMP is not Photoshop" thanks god.
Photoshop is a feature-monster and how many PS-users uses all these features? 1%? I think not.
Should GIMP have all the features that all the users want? Maybe for one time in 365 days? I say no - nobody could seriously wish such a overload-monster. The monster is allways out there, it named Photoshop.

(Jul 8, 2013 09:49)ofnuts Wrote: Not sure... Gimp is done by very skilled developers, who know the application very well. So either these people have a job and work on it on their spare time

exactly! this is the point
GIMP is free software and the developers are free to implement features or even not and this is good so far. It was good enough for decades until today.
Why this hunting for features, features, features, ...? "GIMP is not Photoshop" thanks god.
Photoshop is a feature-monster and how many PS-users uses all these features? 1%? I think not.
Should GIMP have all the features that all the users want? Maybe for one time in 365 days? I say no - nobody could seriously wish such a overload-monster. The monster is allways out there, it named Photoshop.

Photoshop is for photos, and there is fireworks, illustrator and many other big cost programs, while gimp is the only serious program which people are using for various reasons. And gimp is definately not 1 purpose only! So this is why gimp doesnt have much needed features, and bug/annoyances fixes..

Its good to say gimp is perfect as it is(after newest path which finally supports underlining text, single window mode and many other "features" that were needed like 5years ago!)

(Jul 9, 2013 10:05)NewUser Wrote: Its good to say gimp is perfect as it is(after newest path which finally supports underlining text, single window mode and many other "features" that were needed like 5years ago!)

Nobody said GIMP is perfect as it is. But the way to develop it is the best way so far.
Crowdfunding for feature-hunting is a dead-end street. As ofnuts wrote, plugins are the way for featuremania. Like G'mic with a dozen of more or less sensless filters. But that is ok, install it if there is a need for or leave it if not.

Gimp 2.8 is not going anywhere if you don't like change.Besides I think that there is always room for improvement and I think that the developers would agree with us..

Gimp is not a "photoshop" replacement anyway nor anybody is suggesting it to become like PS.Gimp is something much better that could save a lot of time to achive their long term goals with funding.

Besides "new features" aren't the only thing the team could improve (gegl trasition/UI improvements/tablet support anyone?).

Improving =/= new features.
Improving =/= Overload of features.

For instance Autodesk's sketchbook pro as improved a lot without becoming a "feature montser" in fact improvements have made it simpler.This is not to say that the most popular request aren't out of place, having new features is not a bad thing as you seem to imply.

After all a lot of artists want this program to improve much faster and the current developers could oversee any new changes so the idea of them losing control is just not true.. In fact they lack manpower now to guide the google summer students. This tells me that they could get a hand.

For me this is "complexity fear" is a non issue. between gimp 2.4 and 2.8 there were 4 years. If the team accepts our funding they could achive their goals much faster.

If Gimp was already "perfect" the developers wouldn't even bother on improving it right now. The proyect would have been abandoned years ago.They are humble enough to see that they can always improve .

(Jul 8, 2013 12:33)silk Wrote:

(Jul 8, 2013 09:49)ofnuts Wrote: Not sure... Gimp is done by very skilled developers, who know the application very well. So either these people have a job and work on it on their spare time

exactly! this is the point
GIMP is free software and the developers are free to implement features or even not and this is good so far. It was good enough for decades until today.
Why this hunting for features, features, features, ...? "GIMP is not Photoshop" thanks god.
Photoshop is a feature-monster and how many PS-users uses all these features? 1%? I think not.
Should GIMP have all the features that all the users want? Maybe for one time in 365 days? I say no - nobody could seriously wish such a overload-monster. The monster is allways out there, it named Photoshop.

I'll be more intrigued in this concept if you can contain your idea to this thread.
See ks community guidlines:
kickstarter/help/community
one line above "promoting..." where it talks about forums

Maybe we could all compile a list of bug fixes & new features we would like to see
see "single servings" near the bottom
kickstarter/help/guidelines

Not yet I am afraid. But I hope we will get a response soon. I don't think I am link bombing given that I haven't included any links to anything at all (beyond examples) . If the gimp developers accept the idea, I will talk with popular journalist to promote it instead.

I like your idea of posting a proposal of new features. Personally I will be happy with just some improvements/ features for painting. I would like to see other more tech saavy people proposal's instead.

my ideas:

-making each brush to have it's own size/pressure sensitivity settings
-Make right click to open brush editor
-canvaz rotation
-Mini window to mix colors
-Ability to change brush rotation.

I guess finishing current goals would be a great way to start and maybe even a poll for the most popular ones. But I wouldn't mind giving GIMP developers full control on what direction they want to take GIMP next.

Yes, please somebody make me a plugin where i can drag layers in layer tab. Right now you can drag only 1layer at the time, and i need 3-10layers at the time(changing position in layers tab). I could donate 5bucks to this feature!

(Jul 8, 2013 09:49)ofnuts Wrote: Not sure... Gimp is done by very skilled developers, who know the application very well. So either these people have a job and work on it on their spare time, or they don't (not too likely if they are really good developers) but then they are very expensive to hire.

May I suggest that everyone who wishes to comment here first reads this and in particular this chapter.

I think that the opensource ideal is a noble one.One more reason to love GIMP over PS

to quote this

`"Perhaps in the end the open-source culture will triumph not because cooperation is morally right or software ``hoarding'' is morally wrong but simply because the closed-source world cannot win an evolutionary arms race with open-source communities that can put orders of magnitude more skilled time into a problem."

The truth is that even free opensource volunteers work is worth something. I am sure they have spent money to achive their goals. Hard work costs money even if people are willing to work for free.

I think that having people to support them trough funding, not only is an advantage that cooperation has over corporations.But also a sign that people can help our hard working volunteers.

To further quote you "see frylock picture" this is what people do for big corporates, they don't care, just buy on impulses.

You won't go into what specific features you want to see upgraded/added, do you even use Gimp?

NewUser Wrote:Yes, please somebody make me a plugin where i can drag layers in layer tab. Right now you can drag only 1layer at the time, and i need 3-10layers at the time(changing position in layers tab). I could donate 5bucks to this feature!

NewUser , even though the layer's window has the ability to group and move(as stated above), is stating a feature they would like to see. Thats what I'm talking about!
This is why I said we should compile a list of commonly wanted features.
You could even request a plugin, if not found on the registry maybe someone can make it, thats the beauty of open-source!

Besides, going back to the "one servings" point, ks if for projects that have an end, like a film, a video game... gimp is a photo editing program which is an on going project with convience of additional plugins users can create plugins because its not closed-source.